


Exhale

by orphan_account



Category: Boy Meets World
Genre: Gen, Post-Episode: s04e21Cult Fiction
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-15
Updated: 2020-09-15
Packaged: 2021-03-06 17:28:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,475
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26482675
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: He stands there beside her, watching the bubbles float up through the tank and pop on the surface of the water, and he doesn’t move away when she wraps an arm around his shoulders and holds on tight. He feels as small and frail as Jon looked in that hospital bed. In a cobwebbed corner of his mind he wonders if he’d float away like those bubbles if Topanga let him go.
Comments: 6
Kudos: 15





	Exhale

**Author's Note:**

> I’ve absolutely fallen in love with _Boy Meets World_ since I began watching it, and one of my favorite relationships of the show is the familial one of Shawn and Jonathan. I wanted to see the direct aftermath of “Cult Fiction,” and so this fic was born. Hope you enjoy reading it!

###### Day One

In movies, there’s always a heart monitor beeping in the hospital room like a ticking clock, like a bomb ready to explode, loud, unforgiving, ratcheting the tension until it feels like your own heart might beat out of its chest. There’s nothing like that in Jon’s hospital room, not quite. It is not absolute silence, but the beeping is very much quieter than it seems in movies, and only occasionally does it stir Shawn’s attention. Otherwise the room is overflowing with silence, a sort of unwavering peace that gets on the nerves just as much as noise could. Footsteps and conversation and the typical sounds spill in from the door, ajar just a few inches, but they come through muted. Really everything is muted right now, and it might be because of the numbness that’s invaded Shawn’s head like insidious ivy, but he thinks it’s just that people are so careful in hospitals. He hates it. He wishes somebody would make a racket and distract him from all the things he doesn’t want to face, even as he understands completely. Whenever he leaves the room, he walks the halls like a ghost. Every step hurried but soft. Toe-heel, toe-heel, grimacing at every squeak of rubber.

It's an unpleasant experience, and just one more reason that he leaves the room as little as possible. It’s awful in here, but it’s worse out there. Harried doctors and pitying nurses and Cory and Topanga, probably still flipping through magazines in the vaguely cozy, smaller waiting room they found while they waited for Jon to come out of the post-anesthesia care unit after his second bout of surgeries. Or maybe they’re curled up in ratty armchairs by now, leaning into each other, Cory’s coat draped around the both of them; exhausted but still firm in their conviction to stay and be supportive. It’s good of them, Shawn thinks. It must be nearly midnight by now, but they haven’t suggested leaving for a second.

He’s grateful, but gratitude slips away like rainwater through a sewer grate. It’s hard to hold onto anything right now. He digs his fingernails into his palms like it’ll make the world feel more solid, and he switches to leaning on the other arm rest, and keeps breathing, and keeps waiting.

He’ll wait as long as it takes. It’s his fault that any of this even happened; Jon doesn’t screw up on his motorcycle, he _never_ does, and he never would have if he wasn’t preoccupied about the latest mess Shawn got himself into. Joining a damn _cult,_ god, how could he have been so stupid? He knew what he was getting into, and he let himself listen to Mr. Mack anyway. It just seemed so _wonderful;_ it was something uncomplicatedly, unrestrainedly good in his life. A whole group of people who cared about and never judged each other, who said he could be one of them. It was perfect—it _should_ have been. Should have made him feel whole, for the first time in his life, if anything could. And it _did,_ a little bit. Even if it was just a façade. It never occurred to him what the consequences might be—and it would have been alright, if he was the only one facing those consequences, but he wasn’t.

Jon’s paying the price, and this is _Shawn’s_ fault, so the least he can do is sit here. It’s not as easy as it sounds. There’s a buzzing under his skin like electricity biting him from the inside; he wants to run, he wants to scream until his throat scrapes raw. But he’ll wait, and he won’t run no matter how bad he wants to. Jon deserves better. After everything he’s done to help since Shawn’s parents ditched, Jon deserves so much better.

“Wake up,” Shawn whispers, and distantly, beneath all the numbness, he feels a stinging behind his eyes sharp enough that he curls in on himself, pressing his face into his knees to stave off the tears and curving his arms around himself like a protective shell. “I said you’d be okay. I said I believed that. Don’t prove me wrong, Jon.”

He takes a heaving, shuddering breath. “Please. Please. Just wake up.”

###### Day Two

He jerks out of sleep awhile later, not remembering how he drifted off in the first place, but still slumped in the chair by Jon’s bed. It’s about four a.m. by the clock on the wall, and for all the quiet in here he can’t imagine how he ever managed to get to sleep, let alone any chance of going back to it.

The door suddenly swings wide open accompanied by a soft thump when the handle hits the stop on the wall, not five seconds after Shawn’s opened his eyes, and a nurse slips in. She eyes Shawn with a detached sort of indifference while she fiddles with something on one of the machines by Jon’s bed. That, he notes, seems to be the other reaction he gets from nurses in this place; simple indifference, and he can’t decide if it’s better than the pity. It’s not, but it’s not… not, either. Neither is really better than anything. They’re just emotions, and he guesses they’re how people deal with working in this kind of place, and he doesn’t want to think on it anymore because he feels straight-up rotten and doesn’t much care about much right now. The buzzy-ness under his skin has gone away, which is a relief, but it’s left him feeling worn, like he’s withstood a snowstorm only to find himself standing battered, feeble, ready to be blown over by a fresh spring breeze.

He sighs and tries to push it all out of his mind, as well as he can, though his body doesn’t forget so easily. His hands tremble when he lifts them to rub at his eyes. His eyelids are sandpapery and dry and sore, and his mouth tastes worse than the fish his dad fries on the engine of the pickup. It’s probably been a while since he brushed his teeth. He’d feel self-conscious, he thinks, if he were anywhere but where he is.

His audience doesn’t last long, anyway. The nurse leaves pretty quick after she’s done messing with the machine, though she stops by the end of the bed for a second, giving Shawn a hard look pressured enough to make diamonds. He thinks for a second that she’s about to make him leave, since it is past visiting hours, after all, but after a minute she goes on her unmerry way and he’s left alone again. Basically alone. Jon may as well not be there; he hasn’t moved a bit in hours, not since he curled his fingers when Shawn grabbed his hand. His chances are pretty low right now, last the doctors said. Chances of what, Shawn has almost asked a dozen times, as though he doesn’t know the answer.

He chokes on his breath, catching air in ragged gasps, and it takes a few seconds to release it all properly. It hurts to think about all of this, hurts to dwell here in the stillness and his mistakes. He needs to get out of here for a few minutes. He won’t go far, but—some fresh air, some better-lit areas, and the inhale-exhale of someone quite awake would be nice for a little while.

He gets up and whimpers a little, embarrassingly, at the shock of pain down his neck and back. He takes a minute to stretch until his shoulders don’t feel like they’re going to pop forward out of their sockets, and then he goes to find Cory and Topanga.

He stops by a restroom to freshen up a bit—as much as can be done with icy water that makes him jump back a foot and paper towels hardly thicker than clingwrap—before he tracks down the waiting room his friends have claimed for their own. Cory is awkwardly splayed out on a sofa that’s too short for him, but he’s happily snoring and mumbling away, something about Feeny and werewolves and the effect of rising sea levels on the Phillies’ scores. Topanga, though, is wide awake and crouched by a fish tank that stretches across half of one side of the room. It looks like a pretty nice one, the tank. Shawn doesn’t know the names of any of the types of fish, but there’s tawny-spotted red ones and lustrous obsidian-black ones and gold-striped-blue ones, and he can see why Topanga looks so thoroughly transfixed. It’s not soothing, exactly, they’re just stupid fish and they’re not going to make him feel any better, but they’re cool to look at, anyway. They’re the most pleasant thing he’s rested his eyes on in over twelve hours. Probably longer. He thinks about the Centre—pleasantly decorated, ten feet underground, filled with Mr. Mack and all those identical smiling faces—and feels sick. He pushes the nausea back and moves to stand by Topanga.

“Hey,” he says. It comes out scratchy and pitched low and he wishes he could swallow the word back down into his throat, where it can only ache on the inside, but Topanga is already looking up, and her smile warms him a little bit.

“Hey,” she says. “Is everything okay?” She winces immediately after she says it, but lets the question stand.

He doesn’t answer really know how to answer. He tries to find a word that means _yes_ and _not at all_ at the same time, but he draws a blank and he gives up quickly rather than drive himself to frustration. “The same,” he settles on. It’s not all that much of a lie.

She probably knows it but she doesn’t push him on it, just holds out a hand to clasp his, carefully, twining their fingers one at a time as though he’ll scare like a frightened rabbit. He stands there beside her, watching the bubbles float up through the tank and pop on the surface of the water, and he doesn’t move away when she wraps an arm around his shoulders and holds on tight. He feels as small and frail as Jon looked in that hospital bed. In a cobwebbed corner of his mind he wonders if he’d float away like those bubbles if Topanga let him go.

He’s not sure how long they stand there before the mumbled words and snores behind them trail off, and how much longer after that before sneakers scuff against the floor and a hand, larger than Topanga’s, comes to rest on Shawn’s shoulder. He doesn’t look away from the fish, but he feels his body relax into the touch, instinctively, and he leans to the side to rest his head on Cory’s shoulder.

Nobody says anything, and the almost-quiet of the hospital is still an oppressive weight on their chests, but somehow, it’s okay. They’re a little bit okay right then, even if nothing else is.

Jon’s parents show up around eleven.

Shawn’s conceded the fragility of the human body by then and allowed Topanga and Cory to drag him down to the first-floor cafeteria to eat something. He’s choking down rubbery scrambled eggs, overcooked hash browns, and some sort of mystery meat sausage that doesn’t taste half bad, at least if you don’t think too hard about it. Cory and Topanga are on either side of him, passing a tuna fish salad back and forth, and communicating solely by glares and expressive gestures. Normally Shawn would try to decipher their language, if only for the hell of it, but it takes all of his concentration to keep his food from going back up the way it came.

It goes forgotten when Feeny and Mr. and Mrs. Matthews come in through the doors, engaged in conversation with an older couple that’s following them; and Shawn’s never seen a picture, but it doesn’t take much detective work to figure out who they are. They don’t look like the rich, gold-encrusted socialites he pictured them as, but they do still have that ‘holier-than-thou’ aura about them. They’re nothing like Jon and most definitely his parents.

“Over here,” Cory calls, evidently having arrived at the same conclusion, and the adults make a beeline for their table. Shawn hunches his shoulders. The comfort of being surrounded by his friends has turned instantaneously to unease at the presence of strangers, and ones so important to Jon, no less.

“Hello,” Mr. Turner says, offering them a thin smile and an outstretched hand. “You must be the trio Jon speaks so much of.” Topanga and Cory shake his offered hand in turn. A pointed pause goes by before Shawn reluctantly sticks his own hand out, and he jerks it back quickly after shaking Mr. Turner’s hand, eyes never leaving his plate.

“I suppose that makes you ‘Shawn,’ then,” Mrs. Turner says, and leaves it at that. A confusing mix of guilt, embarrassment, and irritation spikes through Shawn, and he almost looks up to check the expression on her face. He steals a pickle from Cory and Topanga’s tuna salad, instead, and tries not to think about anything at all.

It doesn’t work. He feels wrong all over. He usually prides himself on providing a memorable first impression, a joke and a smirk and usually the sort of comment that gets him detention later on, but he’s in a hospital and a guy who’s kind of like family is kind of almost dead and Shawn is just done with it all right now. He wants to eat his crappy brunch and try to coax a soda pop out of the stubborn vending machine down the hall, and then go back and sit in Jon’s room some more. That’s all he wants right now. That’s all.

“Let’s go boys,” Mr. Matthews says into the awkward silence that’s ensued. “Finish up. We’re taking you home. Topanga, your aunt’s going to be here in a few.”

Shawn’s stomach drops, and he’s vaguely aware of his fork clattering to his tray when he rises to his feet. “No, wait—you can’t make me leave! You’re not my dad—”

“Shawn, I never said I was,” Mr. Matthews says exasperatedly. “But we’re going home, and we’re not going to just leave you here. We’re responsible for you while your parents are out of town. I’m not your dad, but somebody has to step in. Just let me, please.”

“What if something happens while we’re gone,” Shawn says more than asks, still angry but his voice is shaking, a little and then a lot. He can’t leave Jon right now. He _can’t._ “What if—"

“Running yourself sick isn’t going to change anything,” Mrs. Matthews says, firmly but not unkindly. “You said you believed he’d be okay. Keep believing that.”

“That was before,” Shawn mumbles, even though he knows he’s being irrational. “It’s been hours.”

Cory jumps in then, grabs his hand and gives it a reassuring squeeze. “Exactly. It’s only been hours.”

Shawn hesitates.

“Just rest for a little bit,” Topanga urges him. “Turner would want you to take care of yourself.”

It’s a cheap shot. Shawn clenches his hands tight, and bites back cold words he knows he wouldn’t mean. Cory doesn’t pull his hand away even when Shawn’s grip grows tight enough to bruise, and after a moment Topanga wraps her fingers around his other fist. Oh, hell. These loyal idiots. These crazy, loyal idiots.

Shawn breathes out and tries to let the tension out of his body, and he looks around. There’s no exasperation or anger in Mr. and Mrs. Matthews’ expressions; just understanding. Mr. and Mrs. Turner aren’t even here anymore, interrupting his bubble of comfort; they’ve wandered away to get some lunch of their own.

“Okay,” Shawn says finally. “Let’s go.”

To himself, or maybe to God, he adds, _don’t leave while I’m gone, Jon._

He falls asleep on the drive back to the Matthews’ house. Someone must carry him inside, because the next thing he knows he’s lying on the couch and Cory is shaking him and telling him it’s dinnertime, but Shawn’s not hungry enough to be much interested and he drifts off again after a few moments. The next thing he remembers after _that,_ Morgan is shoving a pink plastic teacup filled with water in his face and asking him to come play with her. He mumbles something to make her go away and curls up tighter under the blanket someone’s thrown over him, and he lies there in the dark until he becomes aware that he’s not going to fall asleep again.

Then he throws the blanket off and sits up. When he looks around, he finds Feeny over in the armchair, talking to Mr. Matthews with a grave expression on his face. The words wash over Shawn without making an impression, and he looks out the window instead, at the sky now turning orange-purple-gray with the dusk.

It’s a few moments or maybe half an hour before Mr. Feeny clears his throat and says, “Ah, Mr. Hunter. Awake at last. Feeling better?”

Shawn shrugs awkwardly. “Something like that.” The words come out hoarse. He coughs, trying to clear his throat. He gets up finally, wanting a glass of water, but he stops to ask, “Any news?”

“I’m afraid not,” Feeny says quietly. There’s a gentle sort of sympathy in the creases of his face, and Shawn looks away.

He gets his water, and Mr. Matthews says they’re not going back to the hospital tonight, so then he heads upstairs and crashes with Cory and Eric. He’s not sleepy anymore, but he’s still tired. Endlessly, bone-deep tired. He finds falling asleep again is as easy as giving into a river’s current. Like gravity pulling an apple to the ground. Like the slide of tires on road in his dreams, slipping on nothing, falling sideways, crunching into metal, wrong, wrong, all wrong.

He dreams of asphalt splashed with pools of red and faceless bodies hugging him tight and smiling at him, pulling him down, drowning him in it.

###### Day Three

The next morning the receptionist on duty near Jon’s room says doctors are with him right now running some sort of tests, so most everyone settles down in the waiting room where Jon’s parents have already been for a half hour or so, along with a couple other families. Shawn pauses when he sees the Turners, and, on an impulse, he drops into an armchair close to them instead of squeezing onto the sofa between Cory and Topanga.

“Hi,” he says. It comes out quieter, less confident than he intended, and they probably wouldn’t hear him at all if they weren’t already paying attention to him.

“Hello, Shawn,” Mr. Turner says, still wearing that vague façade of geniality despite Shawn’s rudeness yesterday. Everything about the man absolutely radiates geniality and falseness. He seems like that sort of guy.

Mrs. Turner, on the other hand, just raises her eyebrows and twists her lips into a sharp smile that looks like it could cut steel. She reminds Shawn of his grandmother, and the way his grandmother gets when there are cops around. He doubts Mrs. Turner is on the run from the law, but maybe it wouldn’t hurt to try talking to her the same way he talks to Grandma. No messing around. Just get to the point.

He takes a deep breath. Meets their eyes this time when he talks to them, and foregoes handshakes or formalities. “Why are you even here? Jon said you haven’t more than called him since he moved here, and barely even that.”

“Shawn!” Mrs. Matthews exclaims, scolding.

The Turners look unruffled. Shawn doubts he’s the first person to ask this; Feeny, at the very least, is pretty protective of his faculty and his friends, and if Shawn knows one thing about him it’s that he’s never been very inclined to let things slide.

“We made a mistake,” Mrs. Turner says briskly. “So did you recently, I’m told. So have many people in this room. It’s the way life goes. And eventually we all try to fix our mistakes, which brings us to where we are now. Does that answer your question?”

Shawn shrugs. It sort of does.

And that’s that.

Despite having now had a mildly civil conversation with Jon’s folks, Shawn doesn’t really want to hang around in the same room as them longer than necessary. So he decides to go wandering, looking for the gift shop.

That turns out to be a mistake. He doesn’t find the gift shop, but he does find the PACU, and the NICU, and the ICU, and a whole bunch of other -CUs, and by the time he concedes that he’s lost, the buzzing under his skin has returned, as bad as the first day or worse. And that’s when things start to go bad; it’s stupid, really, but his eyes are stinging and his chest goes painfully tight, like something as dumb as _not knowing where he is_ has lined up all the messes in his life to spell doom. It’s not like it’s even a big deal—he finds a map and figures out his route, but then things keep going wrong. He takes a turn too early and goes off down a corridor that ends in a set of double doors he can’t open. He turns around and goes the right way this time, but it takes a while, because these halls are really long, and echoey, and just really _suck._ He feels out of place and he averts his gaze from other people, walking closer to the wall every time he passes someone. His has to wipe at his eyes every few seconds, and his hands are trembling even when he hides them in his pockets. He hopes nobody stops him, and by some luck, nobody does.

By less luck, he eventually realizes, he’s gone in a circle. He ends up doing it twice, actually. After the first time he’s not sure whether he’s mistaken or not, so he tries again, and he thinks he picks a different door this time. Except he doesn’t.

The logical thing to do now would be to ask for directions, except he can’t. Not like this. He has no control over his facial expressions right now, and he knows the stinging behind his eyes is about to become a flood.

It’s not about getting lost. That’s just the tipping point. It’s about _all of it._

What if Jon never wakes up?

Shawn chokes on his own breath, and suddenly he can’t—anything, anymore. He dodges out of the way of a bunch of doctors and into a narrower side hall, where he sinks back against a wall. A sob is climbing in his throat, and when it spills out, it wracks his whole body. He doubles over, aching and gasping. Feeling like he’s breaking right down the middle.

Finally, finally falling apart.

He does eventually get up from the floor of that hallway, after scrubbing the tear tracks from his face, and he stops someone and asks for directions back to the start of the hospital. He knows how to get back to the right waiting room from there. He doesn’t really feel like facing Cory and the rest right now, but they’ll start worrying soon. He picks up a bagel from the cafeteria before he joins them in the waiting room, so he’ll have a reason not to talk.

He needn’t have bothered. The only ones left in the waiting room—of their group, at least—are Mr. and Mrs. Matthews, scribbling in a crossword book on the table between them, although Mrs. Matthews looks up when Shawn enters, and the expression on her face is enough to tell him what’s happened.

“He’s—?" This feeling in his chest, he thinks, it’s like—

“Yes,” she says.

—it’s like flying.

He turns and runs, not caring about the people who call after him. He hits the door of Jon’s room hard enough for it to burst open, and it’s only a last-second grab at the doorknob that stops it from slamming into the wall loudly enough to wake the patients in the surrounding rooms. His eyes are blurring with tears again, and he doesn’t care.

“He woke up,” Mrs. Turner says, meeting his eyes as her own tears fall, seeming so out of place after her previous glassy stoicism, but clearly genuine. Her hands are clasped tight around her son’s, and it looks like Jon’s hand is gripping hers back, though his eyes are closed. “It was only for a few minutes, but _he woke up._ ”

Shawn smiles, and he laughs when Cory and Topanga throw their arms around him, and he tastes salt dripping into his mouth and _hope_ like honey on his tongue.

“Thank you,” he whispers later, when he gets a minute in the room by himself. Just himself and Jon and maybe a miracle. “Thank you so much.”

He’s not sure who exactly he’s thanking, but he’s glad, anyway.

###### Day Four

It’s ten minutes past midnight, and Shawn’s sitting crisscross with his back against the wall, Cory and Topanga and Mrs. Turner forming the rest of a vague circle shape. They’ve been playing poker since dinnertime. Mr. Turner bowed out two games ago, ostensibly to go argue about presidential history with Feeny in the waiting room, but Shawn’s pretty sure it’s because he knew his wife was going to sweep the floor with the rest of them. Shawn started the night with his pockets full of eleven bucks and fifty cents, a half chocolate bar, two tickets to a local band for next week, and a pack of cigarettes bummed off his dad before Chet and Virna left town; now all of it is piled neatly on the floor in front of Mrs. Turner, along with whatever small possessions his friends had on them.

“Royal flush,” Mrs. Turner says, laying her cards out. She’s perfectly serene, suit as clean-pressed as ever; she could be mistaken for a marble statue, but there’s a hint of a smirk around her mouth that humanizes her. Not that there’s anything human about the _seventh winning hand in a row._

Shawn groans, and hears Cory echo him. Topanga just stares, dead-eyed. Then she gulps down the remainder of what must be her fourth cup of coffee by now, and starts gathering up the cards to shuffle and deal another round, looking very, very determined.

Shawn stretches, lifting his arms over his head until he feels his joints snap-crackle-pop, and he tilts his head back to work out the ache in his neck. His eyes fall on the bed, and he freezes.

“Hey, Hunter,” Jon says, and then he smiles wide, bright, _alive._


End file.
